Writing as both physician and Catholic moralist, O’Malley sets out the principles of natural law, double effect and self-defence, then applies them to the hard cases of obstetrics and surgery: when life begins and ends, abortion, ectopic pregnancy, Caesarean delivery, placenta praevia and sterilisation. Its medical statistics and procedures are those of the early twentieth century.
A clear window on how Catholic medical ethics was argued a century ago, for historians of medicine and moral theology. Download the free EPUB.